Style: technical death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Soreption, The Zenith Passage, Psycroptic, Vale of Pnath
Country: California, United States
Release date: 9 May 2025

Let’s do some estimating, shall we? According to my meticulous book-keeping, I’ve heard 596 technical death metal records. Rateyourmusic claims there have been 4399 tech death releases since the first one in 1988, but their count includes various music videos, compilations, and singles, while my count is restricted to LPs and EPs. Of course, RYM is an incomplete resource, so I’ll hand-wavily assume their archives miss about as many tech death records as they extra count miscellaneous, non-album releases. Thus, I’ve heard about 14% of all the tech death ever released. At this point, a band has to carve out their own niche if they want to stick around my listening rotation—it’s a numbers game. 

Ominous Ruin are just another tech death band, and I could name a hundred bands that sound like them; however, against the odds, Requiem stands out from the crowd because of its quality alone, and I will avoid using any comparisons in this review as a sign of respect for the band. Intricate, groovy patterns manifesting in staccato flurries of notes coalesce from the fretboards of guitarists Alex Bacey (Odious Mortem) and Joel Guernsey (Axial). Their winding riffs move concentrically due to the combination of scale climbing and frantic shifting of audio channels. The two shredders often break free from their groovy staccato rhythms into furious bouts of synchronized trem picking, exciting phrygian leads handed off like a hot potato between the two (“Eternal”), or blazing fretboard fireworks (aka solos, my favorites of which are in “Architect of Undoing” and “Requiem”).

Drummer Harley Blandford is the true star of the show, however, his indefatigable blast beats and shifting rhythms providing Ominous Ruin with all the momentum necessary to push those spiraling guitar parts forward at their sporty tech pace. Blandford pounds away with endless verve and in an impressively metronomic performance for Requiem’s speed—and he nails the difficult balance of groove and uber-velocity. Vocalist Crystal Rose doesn’t have the most range with her harshes, but they’re sufficient; meanwhile, bassist Mitch Yoesle (ex-Inanimate Existence) can hardly be heard—a damn shame. From what little I can hear of his playing, like at the beginning of “Fractal Abhorrence,” it’s wicked, but alas, this oversight is Requiem’s greatest misstep. 

Impressively, the album flows from track to track seamlessly. Pacing is historically a weak point for tech death bands in my mind, so Requiem is a breath of fresh air in this regard. Ominous Ruin realize the importance of rest, too, implementing a couple well-placed interludes (“Bane of Syzygial Triality,” “Staring into the Abysm”) as well as calmer sections (intro of “Architect of Undoing”), helping to stave off any possible hints of monotony. The band even spread out the strongest cuts to be beginning (“Eternal”), middle (“Architect of Undoing”), and end (“Requiem”), so the forty minutes fly by with bangers all over the place.

So is Requiem a unique record? No, definitely not. But the album shows that Ominous Ruin are a serious tech death force with the superb songwriting and pacing skills to prove it. Ominous Ruin are only on their sophomore album, too, so they’ve still got plenty of time to find something that better makes them stand out from the crowded scene—and time to hire an outside producer (Bacey handles production and writing in addition to guitar) so that we can hear the bass in all its glory. You can trust me that this one is worth checking out, even for the most jaded tech fans among you.

Recommended tracks: Eternal, Architect of Undoing, Requiem
You may also like: Inanimate Existence, Deeds of Flesh, Stortregn, Aronious, Shadow in the Darkness, Deviant Process, Axial, Aethereus, Anachronism
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ominous Ruin is:
– Mitch Yoesle (bass)
– Alex Bacey (guitars)
– Harley Blandford (drums)
– Joel Guernsey (guitars)
– Crystal Rose (vocals)

The post Review: Ominous Ruin – Requiem appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Decapitated, Behemoth, Mgła, Ulcerate
Country: Poland
Release date: 18 April 2025

More than just about anything in music, I love a well-paced, dynamic album with seamless shifts across tempos and textures—moving fluidly between crushing and gentle, intense and restrained, dark and light. I consistently reach for the type of album that feels like a journey, a vast sonic landscape to explore at one’s own pace, taking the time to soak in its many different layers. When the record ends, there’s a feeling of fulfillment, like you’ve traversed a full range of winding valleys and jagged ridges and safely reached your destination. 

With the aptly named Tooth and Nail, Dormant Ordeal offer the exact opposite: an absolutely relentless, inescapable barrage of blackened death metal. This isn’t a jaunt through an inviting aural panorama; you’re cowering in your bunker as everything around you is obliterated. Each time you try to move from cover, another wave of ruthless artillery blasts sends you back to shelter. Tooth and Nail isn’t a wondrous adventure, it’s an oppressive onslaught. So why, then, do I enjoy this album so damn much?

Dormant Ordeal have wrought a distinguishable brand of death metal that draws from several styles and fully adopts none. Their riffs have technical flair but eschew the fretboard heroics typical of tech death; dissonance is wielded with a light touch, accenting but not defining the band’s sound; and melody is a commodity to be rationed for the moments that require it. The music is pummeling, not unlike Decapitated, and a blackened edge cuts through all of Tooth and Nail, bringing aspects of Mgła and even middle-era Behemoth to mind—clearly, Dormant Ordeal fit well in the Polish extreme-metal scene. What separates Tooth and Nail is how punishingly visceral it is. 

The guitars of Maciej Nieścioruk drill right into your chest cavity and violently rip you apart. Maciej Proficz’s gruff yet articulate growls then speak venom into your exposed soul. Seriously, any time the riffs in “Halo of Bones” or “Dust Crown” batter that lowest string, I feel it. The speckless production retains a vicious bite, allowing each instrument to wage war on your ears with poised brutality. The down-tuned, overdriven bass rumbles the bones, and session drummer Chason Westmoreland’s inhuman performance bludgeons and shines in equal measure. All this, combined with some subtle ambient touches, makes Tooth and Nail one of the most sonically addicting albums I’ve heard. 

Fortunately, the album doesn’t just sound excellent—it has the songwriting and performances to match. Subtle shifts in rhythm, well-placed touches of melody and dissonance, and vocals that are somehow both emotive and atonal give a thick atmosphere alongside the incessant assault. Always at full speed, standout track “Horse Eater” cycles tirelessly among blackened tremolos, somber melodic lines, and choppier technical riffing, all bathed in a slight dissonant haze. Westmoreland finds fresh rhythms to suit each part, while displaying incredible cymbal work that ranks up there with Mgła drummer Darkside. Flexing Dormant Ordeal’s keen sense of timing, “Orphans” holds one of Tooth and Nail’s best moments, delivering a perfectly placed and absurdly heavy mid-paced bridge after nearly three minutes of blasting. “Solvent” then provides compositional contrast, building tension as clean, reverberated guitars give way to repeated distorted riffs, whispered refrains accent Proficz’s growled declarations, and the drums favor the toms over sparse snare hits. But make no mistake, there’s no breathing room here. The instrumentation remains violent, and when the song opens up, the tension sustains rather than releases. 

If one song showcases Dormant Ordeal’s ability to keep their death metal barrage engaging, it’s penultimate track “Everything That Isn’t Silence Is Trivial.” Following a rare bit of acoustic strumming, the band unleash their entire musical arsenal, keeping the tension and intensity high while coherently moving through about a dozen passages. To highlight a few, there are noisy siren-like tremolos backed by machine-gun drumming, an infectious bridge that builds into the album’s most impactful vocals, and an almost cathartic melodic outro that resolves with a final bout of blasting. When the track abruptly ends, there’s a notable feeling of exhaustion from this overwhelming show of force. Fittingly, a short, moody instrumental track (save a few whispered lines) with wailing guitars closes out the album, allowing you to come out of hiding and witness the destruction around you—a perfectly bleak ending. 

Tooth and Nail isn’t the sort of album I typically connect with, yet I can’t stop coming back to it. Its relentlessness and constant tension might be fatiguing, and it could have ventured out to further sonic territories, but Dormant Ordeal turn these potential shortcomings into defining features—a concise salvo with the production to make the shots land. So grab your helmet, join me in my bunker, and brace for another assault. With the rate I’m returning to this album, there soon won’t be much left standing.

Recommended tracks: Horse Eater, Orphans, Solvent, Everything That Isn’t Silence Is Trivial
You may also like: Vitriol, Hath, Replacire, Slugdge, Sulphur Aeon
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Dormant Ordeal is:
– Maciej Proficz (vocals)
– Maciej Nieścioruk (guitars, bass)
With guests:
– Chason Westmoreland (drums)

The post Review: Dormant Ordeal – Tooth and Nail appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Art by Adam Burke

Style: Progressive death metal, progressive black metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, Ne Obliviscaris, Insomnium, Disillusion, Kardashev, Wintersun, Wilderun
Country: Arizona, United States
Release date: 14 March 2025

“Hope is a stupid concept” – Andy, 2025

Dune, by Frank Herbert, is in my humble opinion, the greatest book ever written. A story of a young boy turned chosen one messiah is played so painfully realistic that Herbert then had to write a whole sequel book for those who missed the arguably blatant point. Hope is dangerous, and do not put blind faith in those who sell it to you. It’s what makes Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation all the more perfect, complete with people who, again, clearly missed the point. In an age of unparalleled growth for all forms of media, the art of catharsis has been lost in the doldrums of “content”. Dune puts characters through the wringer, and by the end, Paul Atreides is not the character you started with, having lost all that made him human in the pursuit of revenge. Paul, like the audience, wants catharsis.

Dune is not a happy story, and like all good science fiction, serves as a warning. It should make you upset, despite an incredibly satisfying endpoint. Dessiderium—and by extension, its one-man member Alex Haddad—is no stranger to the concept of catharsis, being as familiar as he is with literary devices. The one man project, despite the usual symphonic/prog-death flair, has become an outlet for Haddad to write music set to poetry and poetry set to huge riffs. Sounding as pretentious as I am, Dessiderium tends to be a lot more literary than other bands of the same nature. This material is a reflection of Haddad’s ten-year journey, with a lot of it written far prior to masterpieces Shadow Burn and Aria. Hence why I’m going to be treating Keys to the Palace as a third part in his (possibly unintentional) thematic trilogy.

The aforementioned two, the latter of which became my AOTY in 2021, are bleak albums. The former is conceptually about flirting with suicide and seemingly unimaginable despair, while Aria is the story of a man who retreats into his dreams to escape the real world. While Aria ends on the protagonist’s self-reflection of all he has become, his implied mental state seems to be less than functional. Haddad has been candid that these albums were inspired by life events, and Keys to the Palace is now a reflection of how he sees the world in his current state. I think this context, and listening to the past two albums, not only enhances the experience of listening to Keys but is essential to grasping the full concept.

The word I’d use to describe this album is frolic, which is just as odd as it sounds for an album in the prog-death subgenre. Aria was incredibly unique with its use of the major scale riffing to conceptually convey fleeting happiness, but almost all of Keys is in major. From the first chugging notes of ‘In the Midst of May’, and even between Haddad’s vicious growls, there’s a conceptual optimism to the record that hasn’t been found on Dessiderium prior. Speaking of Haddad’s vocals, his cleans are much more forward this time around, having been purposefully drenched in reverb and murk on the last albums. He projects his triumphant cleans with the album’s first bit of explosive, sing-songy nature after its first blast beat. I’ll be completely honest and say some of the changes outright baffled me upon first listen. The black metal sections that made Shadow Burn and Aria special are all but eschewed, as well as the distinctly Opethian songwriting. Instead, Keys sounds distinctly like Yes as much as it does Wintersun in the way it flourishes, with every song firing at all cylinders and never stopping to take a breather.

This makes Keys an overwhelming first, second, and thirteenth listen. The atmospheric tricks and undeniably perfect pacing of Aria are what made the album special to me, but little did I know Keys is very intentional with its nature. The album, at its core, is about childhood whimsy. Alex Haddad, now a big adult with big adult responsibilities, reminisces on the times when the world seemed a little less scary. He—in this case, the narrator—meets his adult self, who shows him a vision of the future. The very last line of the album, “What have you done to me?”, is the child narrator responding in abject horror at the world he’s been shown. Keys to the Palace is not as overly joyous and frolicking as it first appears—it’s still a Dessiderium album, after all. However, Alex Haddad has had a cathartic moment, scattering dissonance within major scale riffing, symbolizing his union of fond childhood memories with facing his future head-on. Even the very first notes of the album are a dissonant cacophony of MIDI instruments, hinting of the messaging to come.

‘Pollen for the Bees’, quite possibly my favorite Dessiderium song to date, is an exemplary showing of Haddad’s sprawling songwriting. Instrumentally, it’s the heaviest and most grandiose on Keys, while also showcasing the perfect blending of black metal a la blog favorite, Hands of Despair. ‘Pollen for the Bees’ is a perfect midpoint following two songs that showcase Haddad at some of his most complex and challenging riffing, and a great example of dissonance in the major scale that’s all over the album. After practically breaking through the sound barrier with relentless drumming and riffs, ‘A Dream That Wants Me Dead’ is a welcome slower piece, as the narrative begins to reach its thematic climax. It and ‘Magenta’ serve as a calm before the storm, with the narrator desperately trying desperately to keep his childhood innocence intact. The latter only begins to ramp up towards the end, with an infectious lyrical refrain and trem-picked riff sending out the song in style. 

The sixteen minute epic title track is where this album should collapse under its own weight. Beginning with a slow, ascending and descending guitar backed by MIDI strings, the song evokes a similar feel to Aria’s ‘White Morning in a World She Knows’, appearing to start and stop at a moment’s notice, expertly building atmosphere over the lyricless first four minutes. The sing-song section nine minutes in should seem silly, yet it’s executed incredibly. Alex Haddad knows ending on an epic is a gamble, especially after such a long album, and ensures that each section is as memorable as it is unique. The shredding guitar solo that comes two minutes after should seem over-indulgent, but it’s done with grace and never overstays its welcome. The section that dominates the last three minutes sounds like an overly happy ‘One-Winged Angel’ homage, and I couldn’t think of anything better to end on, especially with regard to the final bit of juxtaposing lyricism. 

Keys to the Palace serves as a warning not to get lost in thoughts of hope and better times. It is the story of a boy shown the future and trying his very hardest to fight against what is to come, only to eventually succumb to the perils of adulthood, as we all do. While the narrator does not end up becoming a genocidal emperor, nor a man who is too far gone in his own dream world, we can only conclude that the experience will have a permanent effect on him. He’s forced to experience his own cathartic moment, realizing that he will grow up one day and become an imperfect adult. Haddad doesn’t ask the listener to stay in their own world, but to experience their own catharsis through discomfort. This is a different beast than Aria, and despite the same creator, they set out to do very different things and succeed. Keys to the Palace has cemented Haddad not just as someone who knows the Opeth formula, but as someone who has created his own. He looked back in time, to material written nearly ten years ago, and finally found the place for an overdue emotional release. His mind didn’t stay put, and he was confident enough that one day, this would find its place within his own expression. If the Key to his catharsis was looking backwards in time, and warning against such things in the album itself, then I hope he keeps looking to the horizon. 

Recommended tracks: Dover Hendrix, Pollen for the Bees, Keys to the Palace, Magenta
You may also like: An Abstract Illusion, Orgone, Hands of Despair, Epiphanie, Cormorant
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Dessiderium is:
– Alex Haddad (Guitar, bass, vocals, strings, MIDI)
– Brody Smith (drum programming)

The post Review: Dessiderium – Keys to the Palace appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

It’s worth noting that this was more conversational than the interviews we’ve done in the past. As such, I will do my very best to translate our conversation into questions and answers. If anything gets lost in translation, Alex has my email to send hate mail to.

Hey Alex! Keys to the Palace comes out next week. How are you feeling on the record’s release?

Good, man! It’s kinda trippy, like the music is quite old. I wrote this stuff when I first moved to Arizona, which was ten years ago. So, the fact that it’s coming out now is kinda relieving, I’d say.

I’m sure it is. How’d you know what to keep rolling with these past ten years?

With these songs specifically? I would say it’s the first material where it feels like I’m offering something unique. Everything before this album, when I was writing in high school, was much more…just any band I was in love with at the time. The stuff I write would sound like them. With Keys to the Palace, I felt like I was stumbling upon something original sounding. I never doubted that it was going to come out one day. Initially, I’d planned for it to come out before Aria, before Shadow Burn was even a thing. You know? Life just happens and things change. When I finished Aria I said, “OK, time to finally record this album.” I’m always writing music all the time. So, if I love something, I always plan on releasing it. There are songs that are just as old that I want to put on an album one day. Not so much cutting stuff, just preserving it and waiting until the time is right.

I’ve had Keys to the Palace for a few months now, the day ‘Dover Hendrix’ came out, and I was taken aback at how different it sounded. It had a completely different sound to Aria and Shadow Burn, and a lot cheerier. I remember you saying something about “summertime metal” or something like that—

Summertime soul metal.

Yeah! Why the sudden change?

It’s funny to talk about, with the music being older than both the last two releases. So, I just have to think about what I was listening to at the time. I was coming off a two-year binge of everything Devin Townsend. Strapping Young Lad and all of his solo stuff I was obsessed with. Really, the only other artist I’ve been like that with is Opeth, which is more in Aria. I never got too into the instrumental djent thing, but I remember being in love with a project called Chimp Spanner. I liked Cloudkicker at the time, Animals as Leaders, Joy of Motion came out and just blew my mind. It was a lot of the stuff that was a little bit brighter sounding stuff I was listening to. I was also channeling a lot of my older melodeath influences, Children of Bodom, Wintersun and Ensiferum. It’s kind of a mix of all that more triumphant sound.

The first thing I noticed was Keys is more maximalist than Aria and Shadow Burn, to the point where I was almost waiting for those slower sections to kick in. While the songs do have those, I feel that everything is firing off at all cylinders.

More explosive.

Way more explosive! I find the Strapping Young Lad comparisons interesting, because while this record is cheery, I find that it’s got a lot of your heaviest riffing.

Yeah! Groove wise and everything, it’s less of the last two albums, which was embracing my love of black metal, shoegaze and creating a schmear of sound. This one’s more riffy. More of a riff-fest, I think.

How’d you balance those heavy riffs and cheery atmosphere?

I guess that’s where Devin Townsned’s always been such a huge influence on me. His sense of harmony isn’t what you typically associate with death metal, at all. He always says he feels like Enya mixed with metal, and I’ve always been inspired by that. Ultimately, I don’t relate much to evil sounding metal harmony. I like some of it, but the first thing I loved about death metal, and hearing ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ for the first time was the rhythms. Just how heavy it is, the parts that make you want to windmill. I love that aspect of metal but when I’m talking harmony, I’m inspired by stuff that doesn’t have to do with metal at all. It’s just marrying the two together.

What about non-metal influences on Dessiderium?

Video game soundtracks. I could never say that enough, always a huge influence. Legend of Zelda soundtrack, Final Fantasy, Xenogears, all this stuff.

I hear a lot of Nobuo Uematsu.

Yeah, I love a lot of his soundtracks, all of it’s huge. I love a lot of soul and R&B type music; I’m not like a collector of albums but all the Spotify playlists I listen to are all that stuff. I’m very into rich harmonies that come from that whole world. More romantic sounding stuff, really.

Shadow Burn and Aria are very much channeling that evil sound. I guess that style of songwriting lends itself to a build-up and release approach, but there’s not much of that on Keys to the Palace. There’s a whole lot of “go”. Did those soul and R&B rhythm influences bleed into the riff-writing process?

I’d say more so that style influences the sense of harmonies and chord progressions that I build. The vocal harmonies, and that kind of thing. There’s way more clean singing on this album, and it comes from the fact that I love singing along to that kind of music in my car, and I wanted to do more of that. I felt like this music called for more singing in general, because it’s not as sinister sounding. I like harsh vocals, but there’s a lot more room to be creative with singing for this album.

One of the big things I noticed was that your clean vocals seem to be projected a lot more on this album, as opposed to those last two where they sort of blend into the background. Even the production sounds less murky, hazy, black metal-y. Was that you sort of stumbling around trying to figure something new out?

That’s a good question! I’m not going to say the production was against my will, because that’s not the case. I’m kind of a noob when it comes to audio production. The guy who mixed and mastered it, Mendel, did the last two albums, and I’ve learned to trust his process and what he pictures for it. When he sent the first mix, though, it felt too “in my face” in a way. I’m used to having the singing more blended, but when I showed a bunch of friends they said the style of singing calls for it to be in front of the mix. That’s taken me a lot to get used to, because I’m not that confident of a singer. I sometimes think it could’ve been more blended at times, but overall I’m happy that it’s a different sound, rather than just repeating what we did with the last two.

You still used Brody Smith as a drum programmer. I’m not sure if you write the drums and send them to him, or if he writes and programs them for you.

I have ideas of how I want the drums to sound. So, I send him a rough track, and then he goes crazy with it, and I tell him what I want to keep or what he can go farther with.

So, why programmed drums?

The project is such a “bedroom project”, I haven’t had many opportunities to take it on the road. There’s not a lot of return financially for it, so I value the fact that we can do something budget-friendly. Honestly, I hate giving this as an excuse, but a lot of bands will just resample their drums, even when they do perform them live in the studio. So, to have that option to work with someone like Brody who can make it sound as if—he confuses a lot of people, a lot of people don’t even think they’re programmed.

I didn’t know. I had no idea initially.

That’s a luxury of today’s tech that I take advantage of. For the next album, we’re talking about him playing live drums. Because there’s something special about that too, of course. It’s just been convenience, really.

Despite you saying that it’s a bedroom project, you now have a live band. How was that whole process of figuring out these humongous songs live?

I had to find people who I knew could play them! Everything we’ve done has been with a different drummer. Jay, who plays bass, was going to fill in for Arkaik, but that never happened. I knew he was an amazing bass player, so I remembered him. I discovered his brother, Ben, from Instagram. I was like, “Dude, is that your brother? He shreds really hard!” The guy who I share harsh vocals with, his name is Cameron, and him and I have been doing a project for ten years now called Nullingroots, and he’s had a project called Light Dweller. He’s really showcasing how crazy of a vocalist he is.

You’ve got Nullingroots, Arkaik, and a ton of other projects. Did any of those outside influences bleed into the album in a way?

No, just because I’ve been doing Dessiderium for so much longer. That’s my heart and soul, and with Arkaik and Nullingroots it’s been joining a band and trying to fit my way into that sound. I’m playing in Atheist now, too, so that’s got a whole legacy behind it that I’m trying to fit into. But Dessiderium is me in my most musical, pure form.

You’ve been talking about re-releasing your debut album, Life was a Blur for a while now. Tell me about that.

Yeah, I hate how that album sounds. It’s a constant reminder that I didn’t know what I was doing back then, but I still like the music. It’s not music I’d write anymore, but I have a lot of nostalgia with those songs. I just want them to exist where people can actually enjoy listening to them, because the music’s pretty cool. I started that back when COVID hit and quarantine was happening, and I thought it’d be a nice little project, but then I started writing Shadow Burn and that took all my energy. It’s almost done! I just need to redo vocals for it, maybe have Brody redo the drums. There’s just so much other stuff happening that it’s easy to put on the backburner. I do plan on releasing it one day.

Not sure if you know them, Lykathea Aflame?

Yeah!

They’re one of the only death metal bands I’ve heard that use major scale riffing, and one of the things I noted in my review of Aria was there was a lot of major scale stuff in that album. There’s even more in Keys. Can you talk a little bit about going against the conventional metal riff-writing vein and how that fits into writing death metal songs?

Keys to the Palace is almost entirely in major key, the entire time. I think that major key has a stereotype of sounding happy, and I think that’s an insult because harmony’s way more complex than that! To me, writing emotional stuff in a major key creates that bittersweet feeling, which is my favorite feeling to capture in music. You can do that in minor, of course, but I feel that harmony in major key is really beautiful. Especially practicing some dissonance in that too. It’s that weird distortion of happy feelings that I’m attracted to.

There’s a lot of dissonance on Keys, and I really don’t understand how you make major key sound so heavy, but I guess that’s just the magic of it.

It’s not something I’ve thought too much about. I have my metal influences, and they can come through rhythmically and groove-wise, and dissonance wise even. But you apply that to a major key and it’s got a foreign feel for metal music.

You’ve been very outspoken about Opeth, and how much you love them. There’s a lot of Opeth influence on the older music, but there’s basically none on the new album. It seems that you, more or less, took the reins and went in blind. A lot of the prog-death stuff takes Opeth as the holy grail for a reason, but aside from the song lengths, I didn’t find Keys to sound like Opeth at all. What changed in the formula to make it sound a little less Opeth?

I have to remember, I’m writing a lot of this stuff back in 2014. Wintersun, one of my favorite bands, had just put out Time I. I think it came out in 2012? Hearing the three songs on that album, these massive epic songs. Especially track two, ‘Suns of Winter and Stars’, just like an epic multi-movement song. Still riffs super hard, without being in the Opeth way of repeating a chord progression for a while—which I love—but that inspired me and compounded with my love for old prog rock. That can be very riffy as well, but hearing those power metal riffs in the context of these almost fifteen minute songs…I think I’d be lying if I said that album wasn’t a part of my DNA when writing Keys.

It’s been fifteen years since you started Dessiderium. What has changed as far as going from that first demo tape you released—that I had to scour the internet for—

Is it there somewhere?

It’s on Youtube, if you wanna go find it.

No thanks.

How has the music evolved since that first demo and full-length to now?

When that demo came out, I actually had a live lineup at the time. I was obsessed with the idea of making a band out of it, touring, doing all the band things. It never really panned out the way I wanted it to. Also, a huge thing is I finally finished the first album, and I saw a few people commenting on it, even people who like it said I needed to find a mixing engineer. Suddenly, I went “Oh my god, I’m hearing it with their ears”, and I was disappointed by how it came out. It was right when I finished high school and I was going to university right after, so I stepped away from music for a little bit. I tuned in to other things in life. I was such a hermit with music in high school, and I missed a lot of experiences. So, I was trying to make up for that in college. But I ended up writing a shit-ton of music all throughout college. When I finished, I had to get back into it. Joining Arkaik also thrust me back into it, playing music, and learning from how those guys recorded, I applied it to my own music and made a good sounding album.

With the music evolving, there’s also been more symphonics added each album. There’s layers of MIDI instrumentals going on in the album, despite a real piano being used on ‘Dover Hendrix’ and ‘Pollen ForThe Bees’. Is this tapping into the video game OST influence, or is it merely for cost and time efficiency? 

Yeah, you nailed it. Both of those things are true. I would really like to get into making orchestrations, because you can make them sound real. Some of the future stuff I’m working on is going to dip into that. Doing four or five albums with the same kind of MIDI sounds is getting a little…I don’t want to say stale, but predictable. I’ve always leaned into the fact that it sounds more video game-like if I use the MIDI instruments, and if I don’t mess with them that much. I just let a fake synth sound like a fake synth, or the strings sound super not realistic. Not like Septicflesh where it sounds like a huge orchestra, kind of lean into that cheaper, fake sound.

What other video game composers can you say influenced you on the album?

I always have to shout out Stewart Copeland for his Spyro soundtrack. That’s so huge for me, specifically the level Lofty Castle. The music in that level is one of my favorite pieces of music ever. Just really whimsical piano melodies, where all the intervals are spread apart, and it’s one of those things that I think about all the time. Especially when I program piano parts.

Are you drawn to a lot of these composers because of the more maximalist approach of how the Japanese composers tend to write their music?

Yeah, yeah. As opposed to the dungeon synth-y stuff. JRPGs feel very inspired by old prog rock, with those beautiful, magical flute melodies over string movements. I’m addicted to the formula, and I think they’re unmatched in terms of how well they match the atmosphere of whatever part of the game you’re at. That whole relationship of music and listening to these soundtracks while I’m not playing the game, I feel like I’m part of the world, and that’s the beautiful, escapist part of music to me. Those composers do that the best for me.

You have a lot more of a poetic approach to lyrical writing. It seems like it’s less standard metal lyric writing, and it almost feels like something that you’ve written in stream of consciousness and you stick it in songs where you think it fits. What about literary influences?

I’m way more inspired by that than a lot of other bands. There’s been certain big books for me…Vladimir Nabokov is one of my favorite writers, so his style I feel like I straight up copied for a while. Very inspired by his writing. Even guys like David Foster Wallace, that brutally transparent kind of writing. Whatever I’m reading at the time that I’m touched by has found a way into my writing style. I’ve also always been into writing, I like journaling. I’m more into a transparent, vulnerable kind of writing style. To me, I can’t write like a sci-fi thing, because I don’t see the point of doing it. It’s typically when I’m down in the dumps that I write well, because momentarily I don’t care about people reading it and can just be real. It’s funny that you said stream of consciousness, because I have vocal patterns in mind that I get really attached to, so it’s like filling in the blanks. Oftentimes, I’ll keep cutting it down until I can fit the vocal patterns.

Do you ever find great ideas for a lyric while you’re journaling?

Uh, no, not really. If I’m like, in my feels and listening to a song I made, I’ll just get the urge to put pen to paper and see if something comes out that adequately represents what the song is making me feel.

You worked with Adam Burke for the past two albums now, and this was the first commissioned piece from him. Tell me about the process.

For Aria, he already had the piece done. I saw it, and I was just like, “That’s the front cover, that’s perfect”. I bought that one, but with this one, I wanted the art to resemble a park I grew up near called Dover Hendrix. It’s kind of like a big symbol for the album. I sent him a picture that I took and he recreated it. I wanted the sewage gate tunnel, instead of being a sewage gate, to be a portal into the future. A different world. It’s about the sunny area that’s completely based off that park.

Like Aria, this is a concept album, and you seem to be very explicit in mentioning Dover Hendrix. This seems to have a recurring theme of childhood and a more hopeful or uplifting message than Aria does. I’m not the greatest at analyzing lyrical concepts, so could you tell me a little about the concept?

Initially, when I was writing it, those ten years ago when I was new to Arizona, the first song I wrote was ‘Dover Hendrix’. That song just conjured up so many nostalgic feelings for me, and it was the first time I lived in a new place away from where I grew up. I was writing all the music as a tribute to all the happy memories I had during childhood. I had a very fortunate childhood, I almost view it as a heaven on earth thing, a time of serenity. But now that I’m finally doing the album closer to age thirty, it felt weird talking about childhood, I’m a little far removed from that. It became this concept where it’s like the child self and the adult self meet, and the adult self relearns the value of life from his child self, but also the child self gets to peer into the future and get that first sense of anxiety. Dark things to come. That tension between the two.

I feel that the album’s central message is along the lines of “it’s going to be a struggle, but it’ll all be ok in the end”.

Yeah, I’d say the album ends on a neutral note. The end of the last song gets pretty dark, and musically it’s pretty bright, but the last line is “What did you do to me?”, which is supposed to be the child self asking the adult self how things went wrong. There’s no clear victory, it’s just “OK that’s what we talked about for this album and now it’s done”. Just acceptance of everything.

Lighting round! Any favorite smaller bands that you want to shout out?

Oh, man. I’d have to think. A few of them aren’t even active anymore, I think. One of them is a band called Bal-Sagoth. They haven’t been active for a while, but I listen to them all the time! I discovered them back in 2018-2019. If you’re into fantasy metal, power metal, melodeath, check them out. Best use of keyboards I’ve ever heard. Another band called Lunar Aurora, another band I’ve spent so much time with that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. I think they disbanded too. There’s gonna be a million others that I’m gonna remember and be upset I didn’t shout them out.

Favorite Final Fantasy game and character?

Favorite game is FF7, I know it’s a generic answer. It’s the first one I played, and I got into JRPGs kinda late. All those games were really overwhelming when I was six or seven, with all the reading. They’re huge! Towards the end of high school, I revisited my collection and that’s when I got into them. Favorite character? The knight from FF9, the big dude, Steiner. He just cracks me up. But also, Aerith from 7, powerful storyline.

If you could be transported into one fictional world, where would it be and why?

Oh, dude, damn. The obvious one would be Lofty Castle from Spyro 2. It’s responsible for the reason I love the color pink. The skies are all this beautiful pink. That whole world, Dreamweavers, from Spyro 1, that’s been a magical place for me for a long time. Any others would probably be from Zelda. Maybe Lake Hylia from Twilight Princess or the Fields of Hyrule.

What are some of the albums that have been on heavy rotation for you recently?

I’ve been slacking on music recently, if I’m being honest. I’ve listened to Time II a ton. I bought the whole package because I’m a die hard nerd for that band, and I’ve been listening to the battle album, I think that’s what it’s called? [Fantasy Metal Project by Jari Mäenpää] It feels like where Ensiferum left off. The new Opeth album, I’ve been listening to that. I’m not in love with it, but it’s some of the best stuff I’ve heard from them in years. Classical, post-romantic stuff. Arnold Schoenberg. Not a whole lot of albums.

My thanks to Alex for his time and taking part in this interview. Keys to the Palace drops March 14th on Willowtip Records, and you can go read the review now! I, and everyone else at the Subway, wish him a very happy release day and thank him for the amazing music he’s put out!

Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | | Metal-Archives Page

The post Interview: Alex Haddad (Dessiderium) appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Avant-Garde Metal, Dissonant Death Metal (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deathspell Omega, Wormed, Warforged, demented Jazz Fusion
Country: Germany
Release date: 27 September 2024

Ingurgitating Oblivion is a band with a long, tumultuous history. Throughout the band’s course, they have changed their moniker once, altered their fundamental sound twice, and have gone through so many lineup changes that Florian Engelke is the only remaining original member of the band. It’s taken a long time for them to truly come into their own, with a good number of middling albums in their wake that didn’t quite touch greatness, but this album, with no fewer than six session musicians, can be aptly described as their greatest moment so far with Florian truly coming into his own.

Ontology of Naught presents you with long epics that divide pulverising, demented chaos with moments of dark, twisted serenity. The end product sounds quite a bit like a technical death metal take on Fas – Ite, maledicti, in ignem aeternum by Deathspell Omega, mixed with a bit of I: Voice by Warforged, and a healthy dose of the darker strains of jazz fusion with some occasional classical leanings. Dark Ambient aesthetics are also present, with a bit of spoken word elements sprinkled in. The style of harsh vocals Florian Engelke employs on the album is adjacent to that of Deathspell Omega’s, and it holds a candle up to their work.

Polarization defines Florian’s vision on Ontology of Naught. For instance, the guitar tone is an almost divisive choice; it’s as if the tone chosen was designed to sound as massive, incoherent, and noisy as possible. Ingurgitating Oblivion isn’t really going for a clear, distinct, and precise sound, but more of a jagged, abrasive wall-of-noise that completely overwhelms the listener. Beyond that, everything else feels mixed reasonably well: the drums feel well balanced and they don’t sit too far forward or behind things, and the same can be said for the vocals, which don’t overpower the riffs while still being powerful in their own right.

To make an album grappling with seriously unconventional forms and usages of dissonance, a variety of non-metal influences, and song lengths whose minimum starts at the ten minute mark is a deeply ambitious endeavor. However, what ultimately matters is whether or not what you are trying to do constitutes something that actually works—ambitions as lofty as these often fail at this step. The crux of what Florian is going for here is multifaceted, partly in how the chaos that is built into and granted reprieve from is justified, if the components of the chaos have enough of a diverse vocabulary in their insanity to not become monotonous or indistinct, and if they are balanced with more memorable motifs. Another important aspect is if the softer styles that contrast with the chaos are properly executed in a way that doesn’t feel cheap or amateur, and if the whole epic flows in a way that doesn’t feel completely incoherent or weak.

Florian takes a lot of risks in Ontology of Naught, and some of them do pay off. “Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply With Crippled Fingers” is a great example, starting with an eerie ambience which introduces a simple motif that is expanded upon and returned to in the ensuing chaos. In “To Weave The Tapestry of Nought”, a great example of breakdown and buildup is shown at the midway point: A delirious gloom of vaguely jazzy harmonies swirl around a spoken word passage, which is followed by intricate rhythms below a choral accompaniment with a simple, soaring lead that serves as a bit of a motif. A solo builds before metal cacophony erupts and the solo explodes into almost atonal convulsions, after which the metal becomes much more brutal and rhythmic, like a machine gun being fired at your face.

Ontology of Naught is not without flaws and failed attempts, however. One of my biggest gripes with the album is its usage of spoken word elements, which while not inherently bad, are notoriously difficult to get right. Classic examples would be in death metal à la Carcass, who uses them to paint a gory scene, or Deathspell Omega, who employed them to great effect, staging them as if they were some kind of demonic, biblical sermon. On Ontology of Naught, however, the narration teeters on the precipice of pretension. Florian wants to evoke a sense of radical rebellion in these elements, as if you were listening to the ideologues that served as the vanguard of a revolution, but the effect isn’t quite as profound as he believes it to be.

In addition, there are questionable decisions in terms of flow at times. “The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart” is the biggest offender of this, with the track jumping into chaos that doesn’t really follow any intuitive sense, and then abruptly cuts to Florian’s take on jazz fusion. Following that is more chaos, which isn’t balanced by any motif nor coherently differentiated by other distinctions, as well as an attempt at choral intrigue followed by an ambient outro, none of which really work as a whole song.

Ontology of Naught is ultimately a noteworthy addition to the dissonant death metal genre. Questionable aesthetic and design choices do hold the album back to an extent, with a production job that is divisive, though not objectively bad. However, Florian manages to take on the difficult mantle of making unbridled bedlam into something memorable and distinct, and succeeds to a very commendable degree, with each epic balanced by their own unique aspects in both the extreme and the tranquil.

Recommended tracks: Uncreation’s Whirring Loom You Ply With Crippled Fingers, The Barren Earth Oozes Blood, and Shakes and Moans, to Drink Her Children’s Gore
You may also like: Ceremony of Silence, Mitochondrion, Acausal Intrusion, Defacement
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ingurgitating Oblivion is:
– Florian Engelke (guitars, vocals)
– Norbert Müller (guitars)
– Lille Gruber (session drums)
– Chris Zoukas (session bass)

The post Missed Album Review: Ingurgitating Oblivion – Ontology of Nought appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: dissonant death metal, technical death metal, progressive death metal, brutal death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Blood Incantation, Ulcerate, Devourment, Portal, Defeated Sanity
Country: United States-IL
Release date: 25 October 2024

Death metal’s evolution branches into two distinct paths: intelligent complexity or leaden heaviness. The boundaries are pushed from both of these sides. As far as complexity, bands try to one-up who can go fastest (it’s always Archspire) or create the most intricate compositions (Ad Nauseam, for my money), and for heaviness… well, it’s a steamrolling competition, punches thrown as various slams, breakdowns, and the like. Both sides are fun, and they often overlap (see Defeated Sanity, Nile); but that’s usually the tech/br00tal side, not the disso/brutal one. Chicago’s sci-fi death metal aliens Gigan, though, write music that’s firmly between Ulcerate and Devourment, an oppressive, monolithic blend of chaotic and crushing death metal. Is this the ideal blend of smart dissonance and smooth-brained heft? 

Like Ulcerate, Gigan are a three piece whose drummer is the hero: Nate Cotton of Gigan is an absolute monstrous presence behind the kit. While the other instrumentalist (guitar, bass, xylophone, theremin, synthesizers) Eric Hersemann makes a whole lot of noise to create a hazy labyrinth, Cotton goes ham atop it with relentless blast beats and often takes up the focus as a soloist of sorts. “Trans-Dimensional Crossing of the Alta-Tenuis” opens up with three minutes of atmospheric death metal guitars and bass while Cotton beats his drums in endlessly varied pitter-patters and explosive flurries of triplets. Other tracks like “The Strange Harvest of the Baganoids” start similarly, and the violent deluge of percussion is the highlight of Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus. In addition to the ridiculously sick drum fills that permeate the album, vocalist Jerry Kavouriaris complements Cotton well with his percussive barks, and the science fiction tales he recites are engaging and fun.

Speaking of the lyrics, they’re often rather prescient and meta; for example, “Square Wave Cognition” opens with the line, “madness, disorientation and confusion / upended cognition.” This album will cause all of these effects on the listener. The album is complex and shifty like Ulcerate, it also is produced like you’re inside of a cement mixer being thrown around in the pitch black with liquid concrete and is suffocatingly heavy like Devourment. Occasionally Gigan become recognizably tech death like in “Square Wave Subversion” and there are prog flourishes like how Afterbirth are prog—the sci-fi metal classics of theremin and vocoder, specifically—but overall it’s murky and enveloping noise. Gigan utilize all sorts of whooshing sounds, background synths, and distorted guitars to fill the space, and it’s a weighty experience that drowns you in sound.

I certainly want my death metal to be overwhelmingly heavy, but overall Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus is a collage of noise from which it’s almost impossible to extract melodies or memorable riffs, even the breakdowns being lost. The worst offender is the ten-minute centerpiece “Emerging Sects of Dagonic Acolytes” which takes a leap beyond the overwhelmingly chaotic death metal straight into several minutes of swirling noise—A LOT of swirling, disorienting, filthy noise. Noise can be good, creating chaos and the dramatic soundscapes this sort of music needs, but when it takes away from the death metal parts, it becomes a problem for me. Thus, while the inclusion of the sound effects and overly layered instruments are acceptable and would be a neat songwriting tactic to close out a track, the extended noise sections kill the album’s flow, making sections of the album drag on far too long (the doomy intro to closer “Ominous Silhouettes Cast Across Gulfs of Time” is another). This is Portal’s approach to extreme metal, especially on their most recent releases, so fans of the Aussies should love this, but I can’t count myself among them. Ironically, despite being so dense I can hardly figure out what’s going on at several points, I think Gigan suffer from repetitious bloat more than anything else. 

In theory, Gigan should hit me like two continental plates colliding and make me put on my thinking cap while I beg for more aural punishment, but Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus can’t decide to what degree to be mercurial. I lose the plot in the buzzsaw of the guitars and the elaborate compositions, but I never find myself bewildered and beaten—just mildly bored waiting for the next distinct solo or riff, really anything that rises out of the turbulent murk. This album is certainly an anomaly, but it won’t be my go-to for brutal dissonance.

Recommended tracks: Square Wave Subversion, Katabatic Windswept Landscapes, Erratic Pulsitivity and Horror
You may also like: Artificial Brain, Mithras, Flourishing, Wormed, Diskord, Fractal Generator, Mitochondrion, Ingurgitating Oblivion, Warforged, Anachronism, Infernal Coil, Afterbirth, Wormhole
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Gigan is:
Eric Hersemann – All electric, acoustic and bass guitars, theremin, otomatone, synths, lyrics, concepts and madness.

Nathan Cotton – Drums, percussion and Sunny weather.

Jerry Kavouriaris – Vocals and violence.

The post Review: Gigan – Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Technical death metal, progressive death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: The Black Dahlia Murder, Psycroptic, Archspire, Infant Annihilator, Revocation
Country: Sweden
Release date: October 18, 2024

Let’s be honest here: tech-death is one big dick measuring contest. After dropping two albums then promptly dipping, Necrophagist’s absent throne has opened the floodgates for every musician with a penchant for speed to fill. Unfortunately, most of these musicians didn’t really get the memo that behind Necrophagist’s blisteringly fast playing was a backdrop of incredibly written riffs and solos. Those that understand the painstaking effort behind crafting a perfect tech-death song rocket into the upper echelons at four-hundred BPM, while the rest twiddle their thumbs hoping that they can one day graze the empire that Archspire or First Fragment have created for themselves.

Carnosus weren’t in this war from the start. They’ve been the cave-tribe off the southern fringes of The Black Dahlia Murder’s melodeath kingdom. They heard the glorious Gothenburg riffs and Trevor Strnad’s mountain lion-like screeches from afar, and in 2020, decided to try their own hand at such a musical style. While good in its own right, debut Dogma of the Deceased pales in comparison to last year’s Visions of Infinihility, to the point where these Swedish apemen likely found the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Extraterrestrial interference is the only way I can describe the amount of growth they had in three years, and it’s the logical conclusion to their continued success, because Wormtales is just as much of a leap forward.

Wormtales was a bit of a shock to me upon first listen. Unlike Visions, which starts out firing on all cylinders, we’re treated to simpler riff structures on ‘Birthless’ before exploding into a melodic solo. Not shreddy, mind you, but precise, and almost reminiscent of Christian Munzner’s (Obscura, Alkaloid) graceful soloing. There isn’t as much shreddy madness to be found on Wormtales as there is on Visions, but it works in the album’s favor. Moreover, we’re treated to the horrifying, ever-increasing range of domesticated pterodactyl Jonatan Karasiak’s vocals. In this one song alone, he goes from manic, Strnad-esque screeches to gurgles reminiscent of Afterbirth’s Will Smith.

However, ‘Within Throat, Within Heart’ proves that Carnosus aren’t going soft on us any time soon. Wasting no time with the blast beats and BREEEEEs, it proves that Carnosus have the fire within to create the techy madness they became known for on Visions, but have simply chosen to create something more on Wormtales. They became too smart for their own good and knew that they couldn’t rehash the same sound with different results. As the clean guitar proves near the end of the aforementioned song, Carnosus have decided to not play faster, but write stronger.

The pummeling riffs, like the one that drives ‘Neglectikon’, Karasiak’s unhinged vocals, and the—dare I say—beautiful guitar solos (come on, listen to the ending of ‘Wound of Wisdom’) have come together in harmony to create a signature sound unique to Carnosus. Sure, the influences are obvious, as they were on the last album, but this cave-tribe concluded that writing fast and only fast was completely beneath them, and decided to opt for songs that perfectly tow the line between bone-headed and big brained. ‘Worm Charmer’ starts with the most meat-headed riff on the album, and throws a curve ball with an incredibly tasteful bass and guitar solo about halfway through.

Unlike Visions, I wouldn’t say that Wormtales has a stronger half. In fact, everything from ‘Yearnings of a Rotten Spine’ onward is likely going to be a SOTY contender for me. However, every time I think I’ve found a favorite, the vocal acrobatics of back-to-back bangers ‘Harbinger of Woundism’ and ‘Paradoxical Impulse’ keep bringing me back. I know I’ve mentioned Karasiak a lot in this review, but he is truly the tipping point in increasing the final score by half a point. If the final song didn’t continue Wormtales’ tradition of experimenting by starting out with a throat-singing section, I think I’d say it’s merely just as good as Visions. 

When Carnosus said that their next album was already in the works back in 2023, I didn’t think it would be even close to this good. With Visions, they entered themselves into the Tech-War, but with Wormtales, they’ve shown that they’re wholly unconcerned with warfare, and all they want to do is make disgusting noises. Carnosus haven’t set out to become the next speedster, but have staked their career on continuing to evolve into something beyond. I’m a bit worried that the moment these boneheaded apes figure out how to make their bass even more audible, they’re going to evolve far past what humanity is able to comprehend. Perhaps with a second 2001 monolith, they’ll reach the very stars, and disregard the Tech-Throne entirely. 

Recommended tracks: Birthless, Yearnings of a Rotten Spine, Neglectikon, Harbinger of Woudism, Solace in Soil
You may also like: Hath, Slugdge, Afterbirth, Wormhole, Xoth
Final verdict: 9.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Carnosus is:
– Marcus Strindlund (bass)
– Jacob Hedner (drums)
– Rickard Persson (guitars)
– Jonatan Karasiak (vocals)
– Markus Jokela Nystrom (guitars)

The post Review: Carnosus – Wormtales appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: dissonant death metal, mathcore, technical death metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Imperial Triumphant, Gorguts, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Chat Pile, Car Bomb, Frontierer
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 6 September 2024

“First off, fuck Elon Musk”: the opening line of Jpegmafia and Danny Brown’s instant hip-hop classic Scaring the Hoes. Pyrrhon’s lyricist and vocalist extraordinaire Doug Moore starts Exhaust similarly—albeit a tad more literarily with his characteristic blend of flash prose and Realist poetry—the first track “Not Going to Mars” is a big fuck you to Elon Musk. Who isn’t sick of his shit by now? Exhaust revolves around the theme of societal exhaustion: the inability to pay for things as basic as medical care because of the felicity of circumstance (“Strange Pains,” “Luck of the Draw”), the degradation of life for capitalist overuse (“Concrete Charlie,” “Last Gasp”), and a general dread of societal problems like social media, artificial intelligence, and constant advertisement. In an increasingly divided country and world, everybody’s stretched a little thin.

With some introspection, Pyrrhon realized this applied to them as a band, too, losing their spark in a feeling of collective dis-inspiration. Their solution was renting out a cabin with a glut of psychedelics and their instruments: the results speak for themselves. This is a band who’ve rediscovered their teenage vitality. An endless stream of contorted riffs, Exhaust is frantic and abrasive with its mix of Ad Nauseamisms, Imperial Triumphant’s jazziness, Frontierer-esque mathcore sections, and a hearty dash of The Dillinger Escape Plan in Moore’s vocals which shift from sewer-y gutturals and acerbic screams to uncanny half-clean wails. Moreover, as half of Pyrrhon is now in Scarcity, the comparisons to The Promise of Rain from earlier this year are clear, especially with regards to process. Exhaust brims with vibrant energy, overflowing with intensity of a live show. Dylan DiLella’s guitar lines are more varied than his parts on Scarcity’s opus, but several of the disorienting treble bits are translated, and there’s a blackened underpinning to the already complex dissonant and technical death metal-cum-mathcore.

At a perfectly paced thirty-eight minutes and ten tracks, Exhaust is superb to delve into ad nauseam. From the zesty guitar solos in “Not Going to Mars” and “First as Tragedy” to the breakdown in “Luck of the Draw” to the flurrying blast beats to close out the album on “Hell Medicine,” every track is insanely memorable with genuinely endless highlights. My girlfriend (who runs our social media) commented I was thrashing around too violently listening to Exhaust, and it’s definitely caused the same neck pain as a grand old time at a metal concert. I can’t help but get involved with Pyrrhon’s infectious grooves; holding down the rhythm section, Steve Schwegler (drums) and Erik Malave (bass) warp time signatures and intricate jazziness in such a way that you forget it’s absurdly complicated. The churning drumming alternates between impeccably tasteful blast beats, perfectly placed fills, and—importantly—an integration into the rest of Pyrrhon so as to operate as a seamless, squalid unit. Malave holds down the fort with an absolutely filthy bass tone straight from the vile side of NYC, and when he takes a lead like in the free jazz-esque build of the middle portion of “Stress Fractures,” Pyrrhon clearly ascends a level. The band knows his worth.

While Exhaust is paced perfectly—intermittent slower tracks providing some much needed respite from the aberrant technical death metal—I think “Out of Gas” is a clear step below the rest of Exhaust. Its slow 5/4 intro would be at home on an Imperial Triumphant track, and it builds satisfyingly to a noisy climax, but for the first couple minutes Moore’s strange clean vocals border on the weird side of hardcore (think Chat Pile), and I find his slam poetry-like delivery to be not my style. It’s appreciated that Pyrrhon lay off the throttle on occasion, though. Thankfully, not a note is amiss across Exhaust, and Colin Marston’s legendary production touches sound phenomenal, one of his best works yet. He captures the filth, the vibrancy, and injects his own characteristically creative touch to create a flawless sonic artifact, dry and clear. I couldn’t imagine anybody else capturing the end of “The Greatest City on Earth” like Marston; the whole section features Moore’s strangest, most-convincing imagery while the band precisely ramps up the chaotic heaviness, a rather insane ending for merely the third track on the album.

Pyrrhon have always had the goods—The Mother of Virtues and What Passes for Survival are absolutely essential avant-garde death metal listens—but they’ve fully hit their stride here, balancing their intricate abstractions and an addicting zest. For an album so dense, the riffs and song structures are remarkably accessible without sacrificing an ounce of challenging musicality. Shrooms and a cabin perfected Pyrrhon’s approach, and while I’m exhausted from a tough start to the semester, Exhaust is providing me with a breath of fresh air and the vivacity to persevere.

Recommended tracks: Not Going to Mars, The Greatest City on Earth, Strange Pains, Luck of the Draw, Stress Fractures, Hell Medicine
You may also like: Scarcity, Aseitas, Ad Nauseam, Weeping Sores
Final verdict: 9.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Pyrrhon is:
Erik Malave – bass guitar, backing vocals
Dylan DiLella – guitars
Doug Moore – vocals
Steve Schwegler – drums

The post Review: Pyrrhon – Exhaust appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: brutal death metal, technical death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Defeated Sanity, Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Nile, Atheist
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 14 June 2024

I live in a very high cost-of-living area, so eating out isn’t cheap. Accordingly, my friends and I love going out to this cafeteria-style udon place where we can get a huge bowl of udon for merely $10; it’s cheap, satisfying, and delicious. And you know why? It’s because of those big ass noodles—thick ones. Malignancy, like Marugame Udon, deal in chunky noodles: they play brutal technical death metal with one of the strongest collections of riffs 2024 has seen (rivaled only by Replicant). So buckle up, because the slurping’s gonna get messy.

First and foremost, Jacob Schmidt’s (Defeated Sanity) bass performance is ungodly and makes me feel profane bodily sensations. The guy uses oodles and oodles of tasty noodles, spidering his way up and down scales as a wicked counterpoint to the guitars, and the producer Lasse Lammert clearly loves the muscular stumps of a bassman, pushing Schmidt to the front of the mix in order for him to seduce me. His influence on Malignant is clear with the band sounding like an even more technical Defeated Sanity, and Schmidt perfectly complements Alex Weber (Exist) in the band. Alongside them, guitarist Ron Kachnic shreds all over with a never-ending onslaught of riffs. I lasted less than thirty seconds into note-taking of …Discontinued before writing that I wanted to smash my head straight through a brick wall; the album makes you feel invincible yet beaten to a pulp at the same time. I guarantee you that in the time it took you to read this sentence, Malignancy played at least three riffs no matter where you are in the album.

Last week I reviewed Replacire who had some groovy-ass, heavy tech death, but their grooves were intricate little pitter patters of chugs, flurries of explosive drums in knotted staccatos. Malignancy, on the other hand, take your skull, use a jackhammer on it, and then squeeze the remaining juices out of it to drink from your shattered cranium. There is no subtlety here; everything is gloriously as it seems. Technical, in your face, heavy, loud. Moreover, Malignancy’s remarkably smooth transitions between riffs displays songwriting as tight as their performances, and Mike Heller’s drumming is what ties the songs together. Remarkable in both speed and seemingly possessing six limbs, he blasts at light speed yet somehow keeps enough control to seriously vary up the style, fitting every riff with laser-precision. At points, he even overshadows the stellar performances of Schmidt and Kachnic with his cyborg drumming, the fills like at :25 into “Irradiated Miscreation” or 3:30 into “Oppositional Defiance” exceeding my brain’s processing speed. 

…Discontinued is a little unhinged (in a good way, of course), too. At points, the guitars feel unwieldy despite the effortless skill of Kachnich, playing with the reckless abandon of early tech death’s thrashiness—with riffs like the opening of “Oppositional Defiance” sounding almost like Atheist. Unlike Lord Worm (Cryptopsy), Danny Nelson’s vocal performance is a tad too legible for the style, and while his lows are utterly beastly, I think more variance with some shrieks would add more character to the performance, though he’s excellent at sounding like a vacuum cleaner (see the end of “Irradiated Miscreation”), and he does a damn good garbage disposal, too. 

I see few faults with …Discontinued; it’s about as refined a brutal tech death experience as one can have. Occasionally it’s cliche—I have no love for cheesy/edgy spoken word samples (“Ancillary Biorhythms”), and every single track except for “Purity of Purpose” being titled a variation of “Adjective Noun” is hilarious. Additionally, the genre as a whole is a massively crowded space (I mean just look at the FFO and YMAL), but every individual element here is performed with the highest degree of meticulousness. It’s imperfect if only because it doesn’t have the identity of Nile, the influence of Suffocation, the true insanity of early Cryptopsy, or the sick extra influences of something like the jazz fusion of Atheist, but as a honed-in riff machine, Malignancy are peers of any act. If Malignancy were to change one thing, though, I would absolutely love some killer guitar solos; …Discontinued feels a little devoid on that front when they could melt my face even further. If you like your metal to be heavy, you’d be doing a disservice not to add this to your library immediately.

Recommended tracks: Irradiated Miscreation, Oppositional Defiance
You may also like: Brodequin, Replacire, Anal Stabwound, Brain Drill, Serocs, Hideous Divinity, Wormed
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Malignancy is:
– Jacob Schmidt (bass)
– Danny Nelson (vocals)
– Ron Kachnic (guitars)
– Mike Heller (drums)

The post Review: Malignancy – …Discontinued appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Brutal death metal, progressive metal (gurgle vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Devourment, alt rock and synth in your brutal death metal
Review by: Zach
Country: US-NY
Release date: October 20th, 2023

Think about your top band in every metal subgenre. I know Andy probably has his immediately recalled from memory or on an endless spreadsheet. Then, think about why they’re the best at what they do. Are they Opeth and did they do the coolest shit by mixing prog rock and death metal? Are they Dissection, and did they add beauty into icy black metal riffs? But brutal death is never a genre I’ve thought of super highly, so a favorite would probably be one of the long standers. Cryptopsy is always a good choice, and I’ve considered None So Vile to be not only one of the best brutal death metal albums but one of my favorite albums in general.

However, I’m a prog guy through and through. I need something genre bending, something that’ll floor me with its innovation. An album where I can say, “holy shit, I’ve never heard something like that.” Afterbirth isn’t exactly a band who’s sound I’ve never heard before. However, they may have just struck gold. Brutal, slimy, swamp-laden gold.

Let’s back up for a second. Afterbirth is considered a progenitor of the “toilet bowl” vocals the brutal death and slam genres are associated with. So, yeah, if I were the first brutal death listener in existence, that’s something I’d never heard before. But brutal death is very reliant on the standard CHUG-CHUG riffs, compressed production and programmed-sounding drums. I would be lying if I said I didn’t like a few generic BDM bands myself.

Starting with Four-Dimensional Flesh, they added a few synths whirls here and there, and some spacey ambience. But that clearly wasn’t enough. We have the synths on this album, and they sound like something Vangelis would compose. We’ve got alternative rock riffs, post-rock sections, Voivod-esque thrash riffs, emotive guitar solos. All on top of the brutality at its core. There is so much diversity in this album’s guitarwork alone that it boggles my fucking mind. Everything from black metal trem-picking, slam-y chugs, and actual melody can be found here.

Opener ‘Tightening the Screws’ made me want to start a mosh pit in my apartment, but it was ‘Devils With Dead Eyes’ that made my jaw drop. This is a progressive epic squished into four minutes of brutal death metal, but giving it that label isn’t sufficient. I’ve talked about how I want prog to surprise me and how it rarely does that anymore. This album, though, is completely unpredictable. No songs sound completely alike, and each section of this winding, proggy odyssey of gurgle vocals left me nearly speechless.

No album this year has better riffs, all five-hundred of them on this album are downright incredible. The drumming is varied. Will Smith’s disgusting, frog-like vocals have never sounded better, courtesy of one of Colin Marston’s best production jobs. Some people will see this as a drawback of the record, but those people are cowards. This is the biggest leap I’ve ever seen brutal death metal take in joining the many prog styles as a mainstay for me. As I write this, I’m on my eighth or ninth listen, and I’m still finding so many new sections that I’ve missed. Never before has a slam album made me think “that’s a beautiful melody,” even though the entire genre of brutal death metal is to make you shrivel in disgust.

None of it should work. The switching between a beautiful synth right into gurgles in ‘Hovering Human Head Drones’ should be stupid and cheesy, but they’ve gotten it so right. And just as you think the album’s back to being standard brutality, they hit you with a lush atmosphere that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Alcest album. The title track sounds like Queens of the Stone Age! There were multiple points where I had to make sure I hadn’t accidentally switched albums.

I can safely give this a coveted score, because I genuinely believe this to be, right now, the best the genre has to offer. Afterbirth is the unlikely hero of this arc. Should they continue on with pioneering the genre, this album is going to be insanely difficult to top. However, they’ve proven themselves to be geniuses among cavemen riffs. The next one shouldn’t be any trouble.

Recommended tracks: Devils With Dead Eyes, In But not Of, Angels Feast on Flies, Time Enough Tomorrow
You may also like: Artificial Brain, Analepsy, Wormhole
Final verdict: 10/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Afterbirth is:
– David Case (bass)
– Keith Harris (drums)
– Cody Dresser (guitars)
– Will Smith (gurgles)

The post Review: Afterbirth – In But not Of appeared first on The Progressive Subway.